Night Moves (7 page)

“He can nap as a wolf and regenerate quickly. You’ll see. Go on. I’ll be fine.” She lifted the book from the table. “And take this with you. Spend some time reading it.”

Regan’s mind whirled as she climbed the stairs to her room, undressed and brushed her teeth. As a prosecutor, she dealt in facts backed up by evidence. If you could see it, touch it, smell it, taste it—it was a fact. What Sierra had told her was so complex and demanded a huge degree of acceptance and unqualified belief on her part. Something completely opposite from the way she’d always lived her life,

But as Brian said, the connection between them had been instant and fierce, more than just great chemistry. So she had two choices. Walk away altogether or acknowledge what she’d just learned. And walking away just didn’t seem possible. She put the book on her nightstand and crawled into bed. Tomorrow, she’d do more than leaf through it.

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Desiree Holt

44

As tired as she was, she still didn’t expect to fall asleep easily with all the thoughts whirling around in her mind. Yet her head barely touched the pillow before she was asleep, dreaming deeply of wolves leaping and playing around her.

The alarm woke her at six-thirty, and she reached over to punch the snooze button, relishing the fifteen minutes extra she always gave herself. As she rolled to her side, her gaze landed on the floor…and the huge black wolf lying on the carpet next to her bed. The weird part was it didn’t seem strange to her nor did she feel any fear. Safe. Protected. Loved. Those were the emotions that struck her full force.

He was awake and watching her with his all-knowing amber eyes. Brian’s eyes. She reached out a trembling hand to touch the rich black pelt and smoothed her fingers against its softness. He turned his head and licked her hand with his warm, pink tongue, sending shivers racing through her body.

Why am I not frightened? How can I just accept…this, whatever this is? I am a logical person,
and this is not logical. But here I am, accepting it as a normal part of life. My life!

“Good morning, Brian,” she whispered. “Thank you for watching over me.”

Immediately, the wolf rose, a burst of stars exploded before Regan’s eyes, and Brian stood before her in human form, in his very magnificent nakedness. His hair was dishevelled, a twenty-four hour growth of beard shadowed his jaw, and he looked so mouth-watering her pussy began to throb.

“Hi, darlin’.”

The deep, warm timbre of his voice made her feel as if her bones were melting.

“Did I scare you?” he asked.

“No.” She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. “And that shocks me as much as the knowledge that you’re…that you’re…”

“A shifter?” he finished for her. “Sierra said you didn’t freak nearly as much as she expected you to.” He lifted the edge of the covers and slid into bed next to her.

“I think it’s because she’s so calm about it.” Regan leaned on one elbow and ran her fingers over the thick pelt of curls on his chest. “One minute, I think I’ve gone crazy, and the next, I wonder why this whole business of shifting even disturbs me.” She ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “Is that why you’re so…? I mean…when we have sex…”

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He cupped her cheek with his large, warm hand. “We make love, Regan. It’s a damn sight more than sex, and you need to admit that to yourself.”

“But how can you tell in such a short time?”

He ran his tongue over the lip she’d licked. “That’s one thing having the shifter gene does for you. When you find the person who’s your mate for life, your body let’s you know.

There’s no mistake there. Trust me.”

As usual, when he touched her, a sensual fog swirled around her brain, making it difficult if not impossible for her to think. With a supreme effort, she placed her hands on his chest and managed to get a little space between them.

“I…I…I…” She let out a breath. “As impossible as it seems, I have to agree with you. It is what it is.”

He let one hand roam up and down the indentations on her spine and caress the upper slope of her buttocks. “I know you have to get ready for work. I’m going to shower and go in with you, and run this show from my phone. But I have to be inside you first.” His voice had lowered even more. Thickened. “And I promise next time you’ll get the full treatment.”

She wriggled in his grasp. “First, tell me about last night.”

Brian sighed. “Okay. Sierra said your phone rang not once but twice, but no one said anything. She gave Luke the numbers from the caller ID, and he’ll trace them today.”

Regan shivered. “I hate this.”

He kissed her forehead. “I know you do, but we’re going to fix it. Anyway, about a half an hour after the second one, Luke spotted a figure in the woods creeping towards your house, but we couldn’t tell anything about who it was. Black clothes in a black night don’t give much information. Plus whoever it was drenched himself with some kind of bug repellent, killing any human scent.”

“You think…” She shook her head. “No. There’s no way whoever it is could know about you being shifters and taking that kind of precaution.”

“I agree. I think it might have been to fool any dogs that might be in the area. Or that you might have acquired as protection. Luke took off after whoever it was, but even in wolf form we couldn’t catch him. Or her. They just disappeared.”

“Her?” Regan cocked an eyebrow. “You think this might be a woman?”

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“I’m not ruling out anything. Whoever it was sure moves fast. Or had a quick escape hatch of some kind. Someone’s definitely after you, Regan. We’ll try again tonight. The guys are doing some more digging today, going through the information on the top suspects. You may need to create a secondary list for us, too, because I have a feeling we’re running out of time.”

“I keep trying to think who would want to hurt me so badly.”

“Whoever it is won’t get close enough to you to do any damage. I promise you that.

Now let’s see what we can get done in five minutes.”

It was quick and hard and raw. Regan was already wet just from seeing Brain’s naked body and feeling his long, lean length against hers. In seconds, he retrieved a condom from the nightstand and rolled her to her back, yanking the pillows from behind her head.

Spreading her legs wide, he opened the lips of her cunt, positioned the head of his cock at her entrance and penetrated her with one hard thrust.

“Oh, God.” The harsh cry ripped from his throat. Bracing himself on his forearms, he held himself completely still as the walls of her pussy gripped his shaft, tiny quivers racing through the muscles.

Regan lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back and pulling him in even deeper. When he began to move, he thrust into her with deep, firm strokes, driving into her again and again, He moved one hand and slipped it between them, taking her clit between thumb and forefinger and chafing it in rhythm with the movement of his cock.

Her whole body was on fire from the assault, her pussy slick against his latex-clad cock.

She matched his pace, her hips rocking as his body slammed into hers, again and again. The orgasm roared up without warning, consuming her, shaking her, her hot liquid bathing his cock as he spurted hot cum into the reservoir of the condom.

He held her through the aftershocks, his forehead touching hers, his body shaking from the force of the shared climax. When they finally got their breathing and heartbeats under control, Brian slid from the tight grasp of her cunt and flopped onto his back.

“You know, we may just kill ourselves, but what a way to go.”

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Regan reached down and linked her fingers with his. “I’ll second that. Think you have enough energy to help me into the shower. We have to get going. I have to find out what happened to my files from yesterday, too. I have hearings in court today, and I’ll need them.”

Brian sat up and looked down at her. “I thought you misplaced them?”

“I
never
misplace files,” she said with vehemence. “Someone wants me to think that’s what I’m doing. Maybe it’s the same person, but then that means…”

“That it’s definitely someone from your office.” Brian hauled her out of bed. “Shower.

We need to get moving. Now.”

“So tell me,” Regan said as Brian manoeuvred through morning traffic. “How often do you…um…change?”

“Shift. It’s called shifting. I usually can’t go more than three or four days without shifting once. I do it at night, someplace where I can run. That satisfies the need, but rage can exacerbate that and call up the urge more often.”

“But where do you go? You can’t run around in the city.”

“My house is just north of the city where there’s plenty of undeveloped land. And now with Sierra in the family, we can go to her cabin in Maine, where she has five thousand acres of woods.”

Regan shook her head. “Are there just the eight of you at the agency? No one else?

Where did you live before?”

She felt the tension surge through his body. “Minnesota. We had a pack of nearly seven hundred. But someone declared open season on wolves, and we were decimated. Those of us left fled as far as we could.”

Her throat tightened as she imagined the sadness and anguish they had suffered. “I’m so sorry.”

He let out a long breath. “When this is over, we’ll talk about it more. I’ll tell you the whole story of shifters and about everyone at Sentinels. ” He slid a quick glance at her. “If you want me to, that is.”

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“I want you to.” She reached over her hand and squeezed his thigh and was rewarded with a tiny smile curving his hard mouth.

At the office, her car was untouched and the lost files had miraculously appeared.

When Brian wasn’t sitting with her in court, he was just outside on his cell phone, talking to his brother and the others.

“They’ve got a tail on Mickey Walker,” he told her at a break. “But he’s not doing anything to call attention to himself. And his wife, who managed to hang onto most of their money, sticks to him like glue.”

“Then who…?”

“Don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

Brian was glad to see Luke, Grey and Michael waiting for him when he and Regan let themselves into her house.

“No van tonight?” he asked his brother.

Luke shook his head. “We had Sierra drop us off. She sent along her apologies but she had some stuff to take care of tonight. She’ll pick us up in the morning.” He looked at Regan.

“She says she hopes to see you again before we have to leave again.”

“Me, too.”

Regan smiled, but Brian could see the strain on her face. Just in the short time he’d known her, he’d become aware that being in control of a situation was important to her.

Now, control had been taken from her, and he would fix that as fast as he could. If they hadn’t been in a room full of people, he would have yanked her into his arms and done what he knew would ease her tension. But right now, they had other things to do.

“I’ve got some stuff for you to look over.” Grey, who had been leaning against the kitchen counter, took a folder from under his arm and dropped it on the table. “We checked out all the perps on the list you gave us, and the ones on the loose are too busy getting into trouble again or staying under the radar to plan this kind of vengeance.”

Brian grabbed it before Regan could and flipped it open. “Did you know Sharon has applied to law school three times and been turned down?” he asked Regan. “Or that your NIGHT MOVES

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friend Lisa is in financial trouble and a promotion on the homicide team would give her the bump in salary she needs? Or that your former…date, Greg Sampson, wants your spot as assistant chief on the homicide team and has been lobbying your boss for it?”

“According to his nosy next door neighbour, he also has a woman visiting him at least four times a week,” Michael added. “No security cameras and the woman didn’t give us a very good description but we’re on top of it.”

At that moment, the telephone rang. Everyone looked at it as if it was a living thing.

Regan reached for it. “It’s too early for my ‘friend’ to call. It’s probably about one of my cases.”

But as she listened to the person on the other end, Brian saw Regan’s face turn even paler. She dropped the receiver and left it dangling for Michael to receive.

“What?” he asked.

“It was him. Or her.” She wet her lips. “Whoever it was said it’s happening tonight and all the bodyguards in the world can’t protect me.”

Brian’s wolf rage rose up within him, and for a moment, he thought he’d be unable to control the urge to shift. The need to kill to protect his mate.

“Shit.” He guided her into a chair at the table. “Where’s your liquor? You need a shot of something.”

“Family room,” she whispered. “Bar.” She knotted her hands together, but the trembling was still obvious.

As he went to pour Regan a drink, he managed to get himself somewhat under control.

But he also realised they had bigger troubles than threatening calls and nasty notes. Someone wanted Regan dead. And badly.

Regan sipped on her drink, feeling marginally better. She’d strained to hear the voice on the phone, trying to identify it, but whoever it was had used something mechanical to disguise themselves. The news about Sharon, Lisa and Greg had unnerved her. She’d thought she and Greg had parted friends, but that might only be her perception. And the NIGHT MOVES

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information about Sharon and Lisa floored her. How little she really knew about anyone around her.

That’s what comes of being totally consumed with my work.

“It will be dark soon,” Grey pointed out. “We need to get ourselves set up.”

Michael, who hadn’t said much up until now, nodded and looked at Regan. “Nothing will happen to you. We promised Brian, and we promise you. I guarantee you no one could have gotten on the property today without tripping the alarms, and we monitored them all day. That means whoever it is has something planned for tonight. They’ve pegged me as a bodyguard, but don’t know about the rest of us.”